Myanmar becoming a super-spreader Covid state

ASIA TIMES
Adam Simpson and Nicholas Farrelly
August 1, 2021

Perfect storm of factors including politicized jailing of medics and vaccination program head is fuelling a runaway health crisis

Volunteers wearing personal protective equipment carry the body of a Covid victim during their funeral in Mandalay on July 14, 2021. Photo: AFP

 

Myanmar is facing a catastrophic health crisis that could have ramifications not just for the country’s long-suffering people, but across the region as well.

The country is experiencing a major spike in Covid cases — what one Doctors Without Borders official referred to as “uncontrolled community spread” — fuelled by the military junta’s gross mismanagement of the crisis and a collapsing health sector.

Inside A Myanmar Clinic Fighting A New COVID Surge

THE ASEAN POST
18 July 2021

Volunteers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) prepare to transport the body of a victim of the COVID-19 coronavirus to a cemetery in Hlegu Township in Yangon on 10 July, 2021. (AFP Photo)

In a clinic in a remote Myanmar town, some of the few doctors still working after the coup emptied hospitals are battling to keep their COVID-19 patients alive as the virus resurges.

Infections are spiking in Myanmar, with the State Administration Council – as the military junta calls itself – reporting more than 4,000 cases on Thursday, in a crisis made worse by shortages of critical medical equipment.

AFP footage from inside a clinic in the north-western town of Kalay showed patients slumped in makeshift beds, oxygen canisters at their feet.